Changeable Guardian Estique

• Genre: Shmup
• Spoiler Free Review: Included ending screenshots because it's hard to get to play.
• Time Played: 3-4 Hours
• Too Short/Long: It's a shmup, so it's not that long, it could have more, but it's also designed to actually work and first on NES hardware, so it's fine.
• Soundtrack: Some good little tunes in here, but very NES style of course.
• Why I played: Somewhere shared it in a gaming group and after seeing some of the visuals I had to get it. Even if they made it as inconvenient as possible.
• Did I cry: No
• Jank: It's pretty basic so it's pretty jank free. That said, I played the famicom version. There is some jank in the choice of production and I think the NES version has some purposeful jank.
• Difficulty: It's a lot more forgiving than most NES shmups. Maybe just because you can alwayts opt to continue where you left off, instead of always restarting from the beginning. They also utilize a health bar, which not too many NES shmups did. Generally I appreciate these leniencies because while I find shmups very fun, I'm not like amazing at them. 
• Recommend to others: I would if I could, but I can't, so I won't. Mainly because you can't buy it for anything modern. It doesn't have a digital version. It can only be played on NES/Famicom hardware. So I guess... the only people I would recommend it to are people really into still using that hardware in particular. Even then, it's a bit pricey for what it is, but I supposed I'd recommend it to anyone willing to get "boutique" games like this. I'm including more screenshots than I usually do for a game this size since it's not as accessible.

To elaborate on the above, Changeable Guardian Estique is a "boutique" Famicom homebrew game. It only exists in a physical format reproduction cartridge. It's a 2023 NES/Famicom game.

Which is kind of annoying, as this makes it pretty inaccessible for a lot of people, and also pretty expensive, for what it is. I'm not complaining, I got it, and I enjoy my little box, and my little instruction booklet, and my little physical game. But that isn't the only thing they did that's kind of annoying. They also "localized" the NES version in the same way the would have in the 80s or early 90s. They made it more difficult. They mess with some of the sprites so they look different, or are like blown up. They cut out stages, and they removed some story(the yuri) and rewrote it with popculture references. The rewriting aside due to subjectivity, it's generally an inferior product - which is something that wasn't too uncommon for NES or even SNES release of games.

So I opted to get the Famicom version even though I don't know japanese. It's a shmup, not story heavy so I only need it so much, and I was easily able to google lens the entire story which is maybe a total of 20 lines of dialog. I also did this to read the instruction booklet. 

Otherwise, the game is pretty basic. It's good, but basic. You can change speed with select, you can fire, you can shift from ship to mech form. Tapping the shoot button rapidly uses one of your specials. It's well designed, but limited by it's format. So it might not be up to what most shmups are doing in 2023, but it was still a joy to play.